Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

490 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
than now,— " Thomas Doubleday, poet, dramatist, bio-
grapher. Radical politician," is the description appended
to his name in the same valuable work which
we have already quoted. How his assiduous work for
the Magazine was consistent with this it is difficult to
understand. His aspect in his letters, which, like
those of the two clergymen, are too voluminous, and
at the same time too little individual, to quote at any
length, throws a good deal of light upon a character
not very uncommon in his day, whatever may be the
case now—that of a really accomplished and highly
educated man of letters in the heart of a great pro-
vincial town, engaged in active business, and yet pur-
suing, in the midst of this uncongenial life, the double
occupation of a writer, without apparently either con-
tact or connection between the one part and the other
of so curiously divided an existence. Such men were
to be found in almost every great centre of commercial
activity, curiously out of place one would imagine in
their surroundings, sometimes writing books, carrying
on a considerable connection with magazines and
newspapers of a superior kind, collecting pictures, yet
not forsaking the native home or the paternal busi-
ness in which theii' external life is passed. We doubt
whether they flourish in an equal degree in the present
time. The occasional notes on the reception of books
by the public around him, which Doubleday gives
incidentally, show that Newcastle, his place of birth
and residence, possessed enough of literary opinion, at
least, to count among the intelligent audience for whom
every author sighs. There are few more pleasant
glimpses into the great landscape, which, when hidden
in the smoke of Trade, and deafened with its clamours,